In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays (Original Harvest Book; Hb333) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to verify what I felt. Now I trust my intuition and its strength. When I was in Japan, I had a sense of contact with people who speak a language I do not speak. Intuition was my divination, but in my novels and my life I expanded my intuition. In Louveciennes in the thirties, I had an attic studio with steeply inclined ceilings. Between the windows, we painted the horoscopes of all our friends and followed them day by day. Each horoscope had hands like a clock and we arranged them in configurations of each day so we could study them and say “Artaud’s horoscope today is . . .” I’m no longer interested in the predictive side of astrology but rather in what it has to say about character. At the same time as we began following the charts, I imitated the form of the astrological charts and arranged my friends and their cities in constellations. I very much liked the idea of relationships being visualized as horoscopes and charts.

Notes on Feminism
     
From
The Massachusetts Review,
Winter-Spring 1972.
     
    The nature of my contribution to the Women’s Liberation Movement is not political but psychological. I get thousands of letters from women who have been liberated by the reading of my diaries, which are a long study of the psychological obstacles that have prevented woman from her fullest evolution and flowering. I studied the negative influence of religion, of racial and cultural patterns, which action alone and no political slogans can dissolve. I describe in the diaries the many restrictions confining woman. The diary itself was an escape from judgment, a place in which to analyze the truth of woman’s situation. I believe that is where the sense of freedom has to begin. I say begin, not remain. A reformation of woman’s emotional attitudes and beliefs will enable her to act more effectively. I am not speaking of the practical, economic, sociological problems, as I believe many of them are solvable with clear thinking and intelligence. I am merely placing the emphasis on a confrontation of ourselves because it is a source of strength. Do not confuse my shifting of responsibility with blame. I am not blaming woman. I say that if we take the responsibility for our situation, we can feel less helpless than when we put the blame on society or man. We waste precious energy in negative rebellions. Awareness can give us a sense of captainship over our fate, and to take destiny into our own hands is more inspiring than to expect others to direct our destiny foe us. No matter what ideas, psychology, history, or art I learned from man, I learned to convert it into the affirmation of my own identity and my own beliefs, to serve my own growth. At the same time, I loved woman and was fully aware of her problems, and I watched her struggles for development. I believe the lasting revolution comes from deep changes in ourselves which influence our collective life.
    Many of the chores women accepted were ritualistic; they were means of expressing love and care and protection. We have to find other ways of expressing these devotions. We cannot solve the problem of freeing ourselves of all chores without first understanding why we accomplished them and felt guilty when we did not. We have to persuade those we love that there are other ways of enriching their lives. Part of these occupations were compensatory. The home was our only kingdom, and it returned many pleasures. We were repaid with love and beauty and a sense of accomplishment. If we want our energy and strength to go into other channels, we have to work at a transitional solution which may deprive us of a personal world altogether. But I also think we have to cope with our deep-seated, deeply instilled sense of responsibility. That means finding a more creative way of love and collaboration, of educating our children, or caring for a house, and we have to convince those we love that there are other ways of accomplishing these things. The restrictions of women’s lives,